Dolly's home

Main volume consists of 26 brightly colored interior and exterior scenes illustrating different rooms and outdoor areas of a house in which to re-enact the story; many scenes have have moveable parts, some with cut out doors to allow the dolls' entry into other rooms, some have pieces of furniture (cupboards, armoires etc.) that actually open revealing the contents inside; several exterior scenes have swinging gates.

My Dolly's Home was originally published with an envelope of paper dolls and a small book called Biddie's adventure: the story of My Dolly's Home. Unfortunately this no longer accompanies the copy of the book held in the Children's Literature Research Collection. Beginning at the garden gates the doll's house opens page by page, with intriguing glimpses of the next room through opening doors, through windows, and glances into cupboards. The living room, the bedrooms, nursery and kitchen are displayed in double page spreads, and then the garden, the garage and the field beyond the back fence are shown in bright glowing colours.

The book is intact except for one cupboard door that has been handled a little roughly and has disappeared.

Commercial paper-dollhouses were published for only a brief period. But they were also made at home by women and children as long term projects. Into a blank book the outlines of rooms would be drawn or painted and then the contents built up with scraps of wall paper, and by furniture and people carefully clipped from magazine and catalogues. This was an early form of collage before the art was recognised as such. It is considered that the commercial paper doll-houses were a flow on from these home made pieces.

The State Library has endeavoured to identify and or locate copyright holders of material digitised for this website. Where the copyright owner has not been able to be traced and or located, the Library has decided in good faith to proceed with digitisation and communication on-line.

Material is made available for research or study. You may order a high resolution copy.

For any other use refer to the State Library of South Australia's website information about orphan works. The State Library invites persons who believe they are the copyright owners to contact the Library to discuss usage of this item.